A couple months ago I felt miserable. I felt like I was drowning. Drowning in my commitments and to-do items. My to-do list was as long as my arm and it was suffocating me! My list wasn’t even full of important things. It was full of mundane things like driving my daughter to preschool and getting groceries. Normally, those things wouldn’t be a big deal, but I was getting NO sleep. Okay, that is a lie: I was getting sleep but in 2-hour intervals. I would go to bed at 9 or 10 PM and wake up at midnight, 2 AM, 4 AM, 6:30 AM. My husband woke up at 7AM, so after baby’s 9 AM feeding I would pawn her off on him and sleep until 11AM or 12…sometimes 2PM. You can imagine that getting up at 2PM doesn’t allow you much time to complete anything of substance for the day.

^^^ Look at that (super cute) hungry baby! ^^^

After weeks of feeling useless and unproductive, I had (what felt like) the worst week ever. Someone close to me made a comment to me about my parenting that was really hurtful. Normally, I let things like that roll off my back, but I let that comment bother me for a couple days. Then I had a terrible night. My baby usually goes back to sleep after eating, but that night she refused to go to bed until 4AM and spit up all over me. I lay awake thinking that this was the worst life ever! All I wanted to do was sleep. Sleep is basic. I couldn’t even have that. Finally, she went back to sleep and I thought to myself “It’s not that bad, she’ll start sleeping through the night soon and I will laugh at this moment.” I went to sleep.

The next day I was determined to go to the gym. I decided to go to a class at 7:30PM. I didn’t want to be late, so I told everyone the exact time I was leaving, so no one asked me to do anything before I left the house. Right before I was about to leave my mom was like “oh you should feed baby” …. I did. I left the house late.

By the time I got there I was late. I was locked out of the class. That was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. I went to my car and cried. I cried all the way home and I cried all night. I stayed in bed for three days.

On day three I thought to myself “I am packing up and running away. This is bullsh*t.” After mulling over how I would escape I realized that in order to run away I had to get out of bed.

Me: Hmmmm….getting out of bed is a lot of effort. I suppose if I want to run away I should pack my stuff. Where am I going to go? What would I do? I kind of like my life the way it is. I just don’t get enough sleep. Running away seems like waaaay too much effort. Maybe I should just change a few things in life. That is much simpler. I think I’ll run away another day.

I realized I was happy with my life. I love my family. I love what I do. I may not have everything I want, but I do have everything I need. I can always get the things I want if I truly want them. With that I got out of bed and made the decision to make a few changes. The biggest changes I decided to make was to focus on what made me happy.

I realized that there wasn’t one big thing or event in life that would make me happy. The things I find myself smiling about are the unremarkable things in life. I feel like I have always known there is beauty in the little things, and in that beauty, you can find a little bit of happiness.

This post is running to about 700 words (about 200 more than people are willing to read), so I will wrap up!

Sometimes life feels crappy. Sometimes you think you are unhappy. Sometimes you think that the best solution to your problem is to over haul your life. Sometimes that is a solution, but more times, the solution is finding a little bit of joy every day in the things and people that make you smile.